The girls and I are on vacation this week having some much needed training with my very ladylike mother up in Washington. I teach 8th graders and my lovely little Georgia (7) seems to think they are all her social equals. Well, all but the boys. She believes she is far superior to the boys.
Georgia is sure that the only way to ensure the boys in my classes don’t think she likes them is to be verbally and physically abusive. That sounds harsh. She kind of is. She’s like an adorable, dimpled, miniature bully. 8th graders of the male variety, beware.
Last week one of my students was working after school on his missing assignment. Georgia came in and got a good look at him. He gave her his most winning smile, “Hi, Georgia,” he said with a wink. She stomped over, took her coat, and whacked him as hard as she could with it, turned around and humphed out.
Honestly, who knew boys would even factor into the equation yet?
June informed me the other day that most 4th grade boys are just idiots.
“Really,” I said, “like who?”
“Boys who like, like you. You know, they just act so…dumb.”
Call me a skeptic, but I wasn’t totally sure she was reading the situation correctly. I mean, she wouldn’t be the first girl in my gene pool to get her signals crossed early on in the relationship realm. In third grade, I could have sworn Jeremy Carter only ignored me and pretended that I didn’t exist because he was totally infatuated with me. I so misread that one.
“Honey,” I said, “you might be reading it wrong. Give me an example.”
She proceeded to tell me about a boy in her class (we will call him Bobby) who was rumored to have a crush on her. “He’s a really fun kid at recess, but he’s gotten really stupid around me. Like, I was sitting straight in learning position in my new seat, and he had been moved right across the aisle. Mom, I didn’t do anything or even look at him, and he got all dopey and started pointing at my sparkly nails going, ‘Oooh, pwetty…spawkley…’ Boys are just so dumb.”
I can’t deny that she has a point. And yes, 4th grade boys are really dumb. Don’t even get me started on 8th grade boys.